What I’m Watching: Star Trek: Picard (Penultimate Episode)

Star Trek: Picard: Season 3, Episode 9 “Võx” (B+)

This episode went from zero to one hundred very quickly, with that startling shot of the Borg cube that Deanna saw turning into a longstanding plot to assimilate the entire fleet. I’m somewhat surprised that the Borg ended up being the major enemy since the Borg Queen (played by the late Annie Wersching) was such a focus of the first two seasons, but I guess it does make some sense given Picard’s time as Locutus and the intense stakes that it sets for this show’s sure-to-be-epic series finale. You’d think that Starfleet would know better than to create a network that ensured the entire fleet could move in joint formation given its potential to be hacked and used against them, but evidently they haven’t seen “Battlestar Galactica.” It did set up a fun scenario in which this crew was thrilled to be so old since those under twenty-five were susceptible to assimilation and may be beyond saving. Geordi having the original Enterprise ready to go sets up the perfect comeback for this crew in the finale, though the odds are very much still stacked against them, with little hope of other reinforcements like Janeway showing up since they theoretically would have been present when the ships were all taken over and the unassimilated were eliminated. Shaw dying and giving the conn to Seven of Nine - by name - was a fitting end for a great new character played by the talented Todd Stashwick, and we’ll see how many of the original characters survive the finale, which I’m very excited to watch.